So it’s popular these days to expect that Apple is forever destined to inspire the tech industry on a regular basis. At the same time, tech and financial pundits seem to be crying from the top of their collective lungs that Apple can no longer innovate as well as they used to. New products are iterative, rather than innovative, meaning they are simple (or not so simple) design and component refreshes. The basic form factor is essentially unchanged from model to model. Why must this be so?

The real question is where has the rest of the industry been? When Apple released the iPod, the other companies released similar players, with maybe an added feature or two (such as an FM radio) that Apple had avoided. In many cases, these products were touted as certain iPod killers, and that’s particularly true for Microsoft’s Zune music player.

Only it didn’t happen.

Prior to the arrival of the iPhone, Samsung’s smartphones were mostly in the image of a BlackBerry, with tiny physical keyboards. Even early Android renderings were in the same vein, since they were simply imitating what was considered the standard form factor for such a device. As court filings revealed, however, once the iPhone came out, Samsung went full-bore trying to mimic Apple, and Android went in the same direction against iOS. You can argue that there are more features in Android, but that’s also the cheap way for a competitor to seem, well, different but not always better.

Yes, there are still some smartphones around with traditional BlackBerry-style keyboards, including one of the latest entrants from BlackBerry. But Apple’s virtual keyboard took control of the market, and the rest of the companies followed in lockstep.

Tablets? Well, up till the time the iPad arrived, the prevailing design was a convertible PC note-book. The display might support touch, usually with a stylus and a swiveling or rotating display. After the iPad, PC makers decided to allow those convertibles to work as a full featured tablet, although thick and heavy and with poor battery life. Did I say they were also expensive?

At the same time, BlackBerry and loads of Android licensees delivered dedicated tablets that were very much in the iPad mode. Maybe cheaper, maybe with a larger screen, but it didn’t matter in the end. It was all inspired by Apple.

Yes, it was inevitable that other products would gain a foothold of the market, what with the proliferation of models in all sizes and an emphasis on price. Both Amazon and Google featured tablets that were being sold for roughly the amount it cost to build them, with perhaps a tiny profit. That’s hardly a sensible business plan for a company that hopes to sustain itself by selling mobile hardware, but Google sells ads, and Amazon sells just about anything you can think of that can be shipped somewhere, including pet food, home appliances, and even products from Apple. The Kindle tablets are designed as low-cost storefronts for Amazon’s ecosystem, with the hope that you’ll buy enough stuff to cover the cost of the cheap tablets. Some call such a product a loss-leader, although it’s not clear Amazon is selling any Kindles at a loss.

That’s not Apple’s game. Apple sells hardware for fair prices, expecting to earn a decent profit from every sale. The company still earns more of those profits than other mobile handset and PC makers, but it’s still not enough for Wall Street. The only reason Apple’s stock price has risen this week appears to be the company’s decision to raise money on the capital market to partly fund a huge stock buyback. In other words, Apple is gaining not because they sold more gear, but because they know how to move numbers around on a spreadsheet. And I assume that’s a Numbers spreadsheet.

The dearth of new products, particularly stuff that upends a market, has sent the critics into wild flights of fancy. If Apple doesn’t push something out soon, well Tim Cook has to be fired. Steve Jobs would never have done that, although it’s also true that Apple had a few bad quarters with Jobs at the helm. Only Apple didn’t occupy such an exalted profile in those days, so it didn’t matter as much.

But you have to wonder about all those other companies. If Apple isn’t producing as much new innovative gear these days, and the year is far from over, what about Samsung? What about Dell? What about HP? When was the last time any of those companies introduced a trend-setting gadget of one sort or another? What about the first time?

Samsung in particular is famous — or notorious — for entering an existing market and producing their own versions of some of those products. Sure, they may pack in a few of their own unique features, some of which work, and some that just look good on spec sheets. But is that innovation? What about profiting from being a slavish imitator?

This is not to say that the pressure shouldn’t be on Apple to deliver compelling OS upgrades and great hardware releases beginning later this year. It shouldn’t even mean that Apple doesn’t have a totally unexpected product in the hopper. But having unrealistic expectations about what Apple should do is just the wrong approach to take.

As we all await news of what Apple has in store for an anxious public at the WWDC in June, speculation has predictably mounted. What we do know is that Apple’s lead designer, Jonathan Ive, one with minimalist preferences, was tasked with handling human interface for iOS and OS X last fall. This presages a huge change in the look and feel of both, and it’s expected the initial changes will appear in iOS 7 and OS 10.9.

That’s where it begins, because the situation gets more muddled from there, simply because there is no solid information to go on. It’s all third-hand, and that’s being charitable. So, for example, the claim that the alterations that Ive has mandated might mean that it’ll take longer to get the work done. I suppose that could explain why Apple has yet to release any information about Mountain Lion’s successor, even though it would theoretically arrive by July or August. Or at least that’s what you expect if Apple keeps with the annual upgrade cycle.

Another story has it that Apple has repurposed OS X engineers to help finish up iOS 7, since that has to be out by fall, in time for the expected release of the next iPhone. Apple could take a huge hit in prestige and sales if an iPhone was launched without a major OS update. Besides, new hardware features, and NFC and fingerprint recognition have been suggested, would likely require extensive revisions of the guts of iOS.

Are you with me so far?

Once again, there’s nothing here, beyond discussing software at WWDC, that is even close to being confirmed. I’m just making some reasoned predictions based on Apple’s history, and what you expect to happen once developers get their hands on prerelease software.

As to the changes, the stories are actually fairly consistent. Power user features may predominate in OS X, such as finally being able to see more than a linen background on a second display when you’re running an app in full-screen mode on the first. The Finder may get tabs and other enhancements that you see now in third-party utilities, and multitasking might be modified to become smarter. So apps that aren’t doing anything in the background can be suspended in the same fashion as iOS. Cutting resource use may increase battery life on Mac note-books, although the display is still the biggest offender when it comes to power consumption. But anything that optimizes power utilization across the board has to be a plus.

Both OS X and iOS will get simplified, more minimalist looks for key apps, such as Contacts and Calendar, which is really just all about window dressing. I think the media makes too much of this. Once the artwork is complete, it’s trivial to replace the older versions. It’s more about what the apps actually do that counts.

With iOS, one hopes that Apple is paying close attention to things that can be done in Android that aren’t yet possible in iOS. One possibility, for iPads, is being able to run two apps or app windows side by side, to take better advantage of the larger screens. That would make the iPad more suitable for doing productive things. Some also suggest Apple could do a thing or two with the Android widget concept, so it’s not all about icons. Notification Center could be made more granular in settings, so you aren’t overwhelmed with the onslaught of alerts.

One suggestion has it that iOS 7 should allow you to easily turn such services as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on or off with a single tap. Android’s Notification window does provide such a scrolling list, which actually encompasses a bunch of services, but it’s oh so easy to accidentally tap something when you are merely rushing to scroll through the notices. It happens to me on occasion, and I think that Apple’s interface wizards are clever enough to make the settings easy, but not so easy that you hit them with a random tap.

With iOS. the most important improvements may simply be to overhaul some of the settings that require multiple taps and find ways to make them easier to configure. In the end, though, the hallmark of iOS is that you can set up a new iPhone or iPad in minutes, and have most everything work the way you want, or at least in an acceptable fashion. Android gives you far more flexibility, at the expense of ease of use, not to mention some flakiness around the edges. This explains why the number of Android users who plan to switch to iOS next time is several times the number of iOS users who’d select Android.

All in all, I’m reasonably optimistic that iOS 7 and OS 10.9 will be impressive releases, fixing lots of ills that customers have complained about. Will they take iPhones, iPads, and Macs into new directions? That may be a stretch, but Apple is under the gun to amaze yet again.

If you can give the CEO of BlackBerry any credibility — and that might indeed be a huge stretch — then do not expect that tablets will be significant factors in the mobile computing world in five years. That comment comes from Thorsten Heins, who is struggling to keep the company viable in the face of reduced sales and market share.

According to a Bloomberg report, Heins stated, “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore. Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.”

I suppose he’d be right, if Apple Inc. didn’t exist. But it does exist, and so does the iPad, which is in the hands of tens of millions of delighted customers. Heins’ problem is not that tablets are bad, but the result of the fact that the company’s effort to gain a foothold in that market, the PlayBook tablet, was a pitiful failure. So let’s just call it sour grapes.

That also explains some of the other curious comments Heins made, such as the claim that “the profit pool is very, very thin” for tablets. Maybe for BlackBerry, but not for Apple. Or maybe he hopes that, by diverting attention from the facts to his fictional world, he’ll convince customers to buy the newest BlackBerry smartphones. They clearly don’t plan a PlayBook redo.

That the company seems to be making some money these days is, of course, good for employees and stockholders. I suppose it is also possible, as Heins suggests, that people will one day be able to connect their smartphones to large displays to perform their computing chores, at least once mobile gear becomes powerful enough. But this hardly lessens the need for a portable device with a larger screen to handle computing tasks that are inconvenient on a smartphone, even one of those five-inch jobs from Samsung and other companies.

But the BlackBerry CEO’s disconnect from reality is not a new phenomenon, and you wonder if the company itself will exist five years from now if things don’t change significantly for the better. But when something isn’t working, it’s not unusual to pretend it doesn’t exist, or can’t work. Think about Steve Ballmer of Microsoft. The company hasn’t done too well in the mobile space, so by releasing Windows 8, they are supposedly establishing an ecosystem that serves the needs of both mobile and traditional PC users with a single OS. By trying to be the jack of all trades, however, Microsoft has mastered none of them. This explains why so many are clamoring for the return of the Start menu and allowing the system to default boot into the desktop without hacking Windows 8.

This doesn’t mean that tablets are always the perfect mobile computing solution when you need something more robust, or at least larger, than a smartphone. It doesn’t mean that the iPad is necessarily perfect, although recent surveys show Apple’s tablet to hold a roughly 50% share of the market, give or take a few points. There are, for example, things that Apple should do with iOS to make it more friendly to power users.

A key example is the ability to run two apps or at least two document windows side by side. This is something you could do in the 1980s on a Mac with a nine-inch screen. Apple’s sandboxing feature severely limits how apps talk to one another, and while the security concerns are well founded, customers shouldn’t be inconvenienced. I don’t think that many people go to Android just for the enhanced multitasking, but it is an issue.

The other concern is finding a better way to handle files. The other day, I read about a suggestion for a Dropbox feature, a central system-based repository of your stuff that you can access separate from your apps and easily transfer to any iOS or OS X device via, for example, iCloud. On a Mac or a PC, it could work with iTunes to enhance the cross-platform convenience, since so many iPhone and iPad users still own a Windows PC.

I also don’t pretend to be able to guess how the computing market will develop over the next five years, even though that dude at BlackBerry wants you to believe tablets won’t be a factor. Rather than have the smartphone mate with a large display, what about an iPad? What about having all that computing power now the province of a traditional Mac or PC embedded in the guts of a tablet? It’ll happen when those Apple “A” chips are powerful enough.

So you’d simply dock it wirelessly with a full-sized display using the latest versions of Thunderbolt or USB for best performance, and employ a traditional keyboard to handle your desktop chores. Without touching a cable, you pack your iPad (or iPad mini or whatever) in your carrying bag and take it home at the end of your work day, where you can, if you so wish, mate it with another display, or your Apple connected TV?

And this is not to say you wouldn’t be able to do much the same thing with the 2018 iPhone. Think of the possibilities. Or perhaps Apple will move the mobile computing market in a totally unexpected direction, and I’m not making any predictions.

You don’t have to look far to find yet another report suggesting that Tim Cook doesn’t have much time left to prove that he’s up to the task of helping Apple grow and prosper during the next few years. Although the wolves from Wall Street aren’t circling the company as eagerly as they used to, and the stock has rallied in recent days, it’s hard to guess how long it’ll take for the bears to assert themselves once again.

It’s clear Apple is in somewhat of a state of transition, with revenue growth slowing, and profits falling, after some stellar years beating market estimates. Some analysts will suggest that this is normal for even the most successful companies. For Apple’s growth to continue at previous levels, they’d literally be in a position to take over most of the world’s financial markets in a few years, not to mention possessing 99% market share for everything they build. That, clearly, is absurd.

In the real world, just what opportunities does Apple have to build revenue beyond the current product lineup? If I had all the answers, I’d be making millions as a financial advisor, but let me just suggest that Apple ought to be judged by the products they actually sell, or plan to sell, rather than imaginary products that may never actually exist. But it also requires a measure of realism. As smartphone and tablet markets become more and more saturated, it’ll be more about satisfying existing customers, and encouraging them to buy more gear from Apple, than in getting new customers. Apple cannot play in every single playground, even if tech and financial analysts say it must be so.

Right now, the darling company in the industry is Samsung. It’s not that Samsung has invented anything terribly new or different in the smartphone and tablet space, and forget about personal computers. But they are doing well following the leaders with good enough solutions to gain credible market share numbers around the world. They also build very cheap gear, which is attractive to people who can’t afford the good stuff, or just want something, anything, to fit a certain need. So maybe someone wants a cheap cell phone to make calls, and keep a simple contact list. The iPhone is much too powerful for such a basic task, but maybe Samsung has just the right feature phone.

However, selling cheap gear isn’t a big profit center, unless a company sells lots and lots of product. So when people demand that Apple build a less expensive iPhone — one that’s less expensive without a subsidized carrier deal — they are not seeing the forest from the trees. Companies that try to fill each and every product niche aren’t always so profitable. Take a look at the PC industry. Apple’s Mac profits are greater than the sum of the next five companies. That’s just for Macs. Apple continues to dominate in smartphone and tablet profits too.

In short, Apple never plays the cheap gadget game, even though you can get an iPod shuffle for $49. That doesn’t mean there is destined to be a cheap iPhone, although I suppose it’s possible to make one that costs less and still yields sufficient profits for Apple. It depends not just on delivering an elegant form factor that will attract customers on a budget, but the bill of materials. If Apple cheapens the brand, loyal customers may look elsewhere, and Apple’s biggest advantage right now is the growing ecosystem. That’s something the competition can’t touch.

So even if Apple suffers from a quarter or two where revenue and gross profits aren’t as high as some might prefer, the skeptics need to consider Apple’s approach, which is to play long ball. Yes, Apple has had bad quarters before, even when Steve Jobs sat in the CEO’s chair. But the stakes are higher now, and Apple has become so high-profile that every little thing they do is closely watched.

On the other hand, if Apple introduces some really successful products for the second half of the year, and revenue and profits soar, will the skeptics listen, or just say it’s all a flash in the pan?

This doesn’t mean that Cook has carte blanche, however. Apple’s board will no doubt get antsy if the promised product launches aren’t quite as successful as many hope, or come later than promised. But sometimes late delivery of a product may be due to conditions beyond Apple’s control. Aside from mastering the sophisticated manufacturing techniques required, consider Macs. If Intel’s latest chips are late to the party, Apple will have to delay product refreshes too. Apple will get blamed, even though all the other PC companies that use the very same chips will get a pass.

But I’m not playing the “it ain’t fair” game here. Apple’s amazing growth in recent years has put them in the crosshairs, and it’s something that is going to be a natural part of the landscape for a long, long time.